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Observations

No, I’m not sure President-elect Trump – I have to get used to saying that! – is the greatest entrepreneur, and I don’t propose that we examine how he built a real estate empire to get some tips as would-be entrepreneurs. Rather, his surprise US Presidential election victory is worth…

How should an enterprise evolve – what are its responsibilities – when it’s closely associated with a part of quotidian life? For example, today, it’s hard to dissociate coffee in many countries from the ubiquitous Starbucks store. Or, if you’re looking for information about just-about-anything, you go to a search…

Robots are in the air, well, literally. All the press is full of discussions of aerial drones to address last mile delivery challenges, championed by the likes of Amazon, trying to think through the practicalities and regulatory aspects of using drones thus. In this post I discuss some ways in which entrepreneurs…

I’ve just immersed myself during the last month in the dense entrepreneurial hotspots of Shenzhen and Bangalore, so I thought I’d offer some comparisons. I’ll comment on the extent of government support, the role of science, and the sorting of human capital in China and India more generally. Shenzhen is…

Why should entrepreneurs care about the public discourse? Are they not meant to put their noses to the proverbial grindstone, work at their chosen passions, and leave high-minded discourse to pundits and policymakers? Largely, in my Boston home, I’d say yes, they can get away with not bothering with public…

The title of this post might sound absurd. If you’re newly off the blocks, chomping at the bit to get started on your new venture, have lined up a prototype, done enough rudimentary tests to convince yourself that it works, and need the money to fuel subsequent growth, the last…

It’s become fashionable to say that India is the only part of the BRICS set of countries that deserves adulation; only the “I” in BRICS is still standing. Current macro data and investor sentiment supports this point of view. Currency and stock markets are more robust than most and global media and India’s finance minister expressed…

Prime Minister Narendra Modi has just launched the Start-up India scheme, first alluded to on Independence Day last year. In the interim five months, the aspiration, the reality and the stretch goal of this initiative have been coming into focus. First, the aspiration. As several entrepreneurs said at the event, we should…

I spent a few days this week shuttling between Bangalore and Delhi, and am writing this reflection on the very important topic of intellectual property as I saw it being discussed in the hubs of entrepreneurship and policymaking. In Bangalore, there was the entrepreneur’s lament, mine and that of others,…

A luminary in Bangalore recently asked me how I could summarize what I had learned from two decades or so of studying entrepreneurship in developing countries and, lately, diving into it myself. My answer: It’s in every entrepreneur’s self-interest to be public-spirited and invest in his or her surroundings. I…